Diaries of Court Ladies
to start in the morning. At midnight I dreamt that a cedar twig[1] was thrown into the room as a token bestowed by the Inari god. I was startled, but waking found it only a dream.
We began our return journey after midnight, and as we could not find a lodging, we again passed a night in a very small house, which seemed to be a very curious one somehow. "Do not sleep! Something unexpected will happen!" "Don't be frightened!" "Lie down even without breathing!" This was said and I spent the night in loneliness and dread. I felt that I lived a thousand years that night, and when the day dawned I saw that we were in a robbers' den. People said that the mistress of that house lived by a strange occupation.
We crossed the Uji River in a high wind and the ferry-boat passed very near the fishing seine.
Years have passed and only sounds of waters have come to my ears,
To-day, indeed, I may even count the ripples around the fishing net.
[This poem may seem a little obscure. It means that her own life had been lived long in a kind of dreamland of her own creating, but was gradually emerging into reality.]
If, as I am doing now, I continue to write down events four or five years after they have happened,
- ↑ In those days It was the custom for the person who wished to be favoured by the Inari god to crown his head with a twig of cedar. The Inari god was then the god of the rice-plant. He is now confused with the fox-god whose little shrines, flanked by small stone foxes, are seen everywhere.
